1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an optical assembly of an interferometer, which can be used in particular as a so- called multi-axis interferometer and includes a beam splitter, at least one measuring and one reference mirror, wherein at least one of the mirrors can be displaced along a measuring axis, and of a beam deflector, as well as a retro- reflector.
2. Background Information
The positions of movable objects to be measured can be determined in a highly precise manner with the aid of interferometers. In this case, a measuring mirror is arranged on the respective object to be measured, at which the measuring beams generated by the interferometer are reflected and are superimposed on reference beams, which are reflected at a reference mirror, which customarily is stationary. Besides position detection along a single measuring axis, interferometers, which can detect movements of objects to be measured around and along several measuring axes, are becoming increasingly important, in particular in the semiconductor industry, for example in connection with wafer steppers or wafer scanners. In this connection, these are identified as so-called multi-axis interferometers.